he & She

Jan. 16, 2014 by Lit Amri for Readers’ Favorite | Rating: 4.0 stars

In he & She, author Wayne Clark introduces us to Kit Cayman, a burnt-out translator/musician in New York City – a fifty-year-old man who is starting to feel numb in his life; less passionate sex, failed as well as insipid relationships and, worst of all, the intolerable loneliness. One night, he stumbles upon a web photo of a dominatrix woman. This motivates him to reexamine his desires and learn to deal with the emotional aspects of his life in a new light. Greatly entranced, Cayman’s desire to submit to the dominatrix is harder to quell each day. Dominatrix, BDSM – these do not exist in my comfort zone nor they will ever. To be frank, I was a little worried that I might have to stop reading. However, the sexual scenes were surprisingly tolerable and the core of the story had more to do with one man’s desire to feel alive and have a purpose in life to look forward to; which is meeting and submitting to his dominatrix. With fine prose and some well-timed humor, the plot is paced well in terms of impact and intelligibility. Sometimes it felt like I was reading someone else’s secret diary and this made it very easy to connect with the protagonist. All in all, he & She is a compulsive read that sheds some light, if not more, on men and the different layers of sexuality and passion. It is about love and, most important of all, it is about simply being human. A praiseworthy work from Wayne Clark.